Marlon Brando: Editing the World
"Accept a role in making the world better, and go out and edit it."
I've lit all the candles and climbed into caves and sat on the sofas of all sorts of therapists and shamans and teachers and gurus, and I was looking for happiness. I think, if I'm fair, that some of those people might have suggested that it was inside of me, or within my reach, and not in a bed or a plate of food or in the hot center of attention.
We tend to hear what we want to hear, and if you want pussy or cock or cake, you don't stop and self-reflect: You rush out to get more of what you think you need and know that you want.
It finally came to me from Jimmy [Baldwin], who was so good at setting me straight. Happiness, he told me, is a very typical pursuit of the spoiled, who have, for the most part, had things brought to their tables, their attention, their inspection. I needed to pursue not happiness, he told me, but discernment.
You understand, he said to me, the ability and the art of editing a film. You can transform a performance by what you clip or elide or move. A stunningly bad actor or performance can be transformed by how and where you place it. It has been edited, and so it is not an honest--or realistic--presentation of what took place.
Well, we don't understand reality too well. We think that what is placed before us is real, because we are either lazy or stupid--we don't look around for what else is out there or within us or within each other, so we say, This is real. But if we remove the negative friend, the toxic thought, the temptations that topple us, then a new 'reality' appears. We get the reality we build, edit, post, print, distribute.
Don't accept the evil thought, the prejudiced view, the pessimistic view of the world. Accept a role in making the world better, and go out and edit it. That is what Jimmy always sought to do: Edit the world; edit his friends; edit himself.
I know that Jimmy taught me the art of discernment, and I'm not saying I was always a good student or practitioner of it. Jimmy also taught me about love, and a long night awaits where I discuss that with you.